August 12, 2014

Franklin Graham Is Coming To Town!

According to the Post-Gazette, the Rev Franklin Graham is coming to town and he's bringing with him something else:

But Franklin Graham also brings with him a trail of controversy. The U.S. Army withdrew an invitation to speak at a 2010 prayer gathering amid a backlash over his denunciations of Islam as an “evil” religion. He has dismissed Hinduism’s veneration of multiple divine manifestations, saying “none of their 9,000 gods is going to lead me to salvation.” The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP objected to Rev. Graham’s comments focusing on gay marriage and abortion during the 2012 presidential campaign, calling for a moral agenda that challenges “the evils of racism, classism and militarism.”

When “Duck Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson drew a backlash last year for denouncing homosexuality in a magazine interview, Rev. Graham defended him against “the intolerant gay community and its vast network of immoral, liberal allies” in a “full-scale assault against Christianity.” And Rev. Graham applauded a new Russian law banning homosexual ”propaganda“ aimed at children, which critics called a pretext for a more general repression of gays.

Oh, but there's so much more to Graham than this. Let's start with the "evil religion" part. From CNN:

The Army rescinded its invitation to evangelist Franklin Graham for the upcoming National Day of Prayer at the Pentagon over controversial remarks he made about Islam.

"True Islam cannot be practiced in this country," he told CNN's Campbell Brown last December. "You can't beat your wife. You cannot murder your children if you think they've committed adultery or something like that, which they do practice in these other countries."

Franklin Graham evidently thinks so. But it's OK, because he says he has Muslim friends.

And as for Graham's applause of Putin's "propaganda" law, it goes farther. From The Washington Post where he's quoted as saying:

Isn’t it sad, though, that America’s own morality has fallen so far that on this issue — protecting children from any homosexual agenda or propaganda — Russia’s standard is higher than our own?

In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues. Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation’s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.

Our president and his attorney general have turned their backs on God and His standards, and many in the Congress are following the administration’s lead. This is shameful.

This is what happens, my friends, when faith does your reasoning for you.